TEHRAN- It is expected that this year a total of 440 tons of honey will be harvested in Yazd province, some of which will be used inside the province and a large part will be sent to other regions of the country, an official with the Agriculture Department of the province announced.Mehdi Gheybollahi, the deputy head of the province’s Agriculture Department for plant production, said that the harvesting of natural honey from 876,000 colonies in different regions of the province has started and continues for two months.Last month, the managing director of the beekeeping industry development support fund said this fund provides 170 billion rials (about $440,760) of low-interest facilities to beekeepers with the aim of helping the country's beekeeping industry.Based on the data released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Iran is the third-largest producer of honey in the world.The chairman of the Animal Science Research Institute has said that the amount of honey production in the country should be increased by three to four kilograms per colony.Mokhtar Mohajer said, “According to the Seventh National Development Plan, the amount of honey production should be increased by at least three to four kilograms per colony according to the diversity of plants and the area of pastures that we have in the country”.He announced that 8,300 kilograms of royal jelly, 406 tons of pollen, 2,536 tons of beeswax, 247 tons of propolis, and 3,917 grams of bee venom are produced annually in the country.MA